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Posts tagged with the category Organizational Collaboration and Technology

Collaborative Advantage

The outset of any new year is always a good time for critical reflection, to thoughtfully re-evaluate the past and honestly look at the challenges the upcoming year poses. Such reflection is particularly significant as we begin 2013.
While it will be a struggle, it is time to courageously move beyond self interest-based partisanships and siloed...

Three Elements for Virtual Collaboration

Collaboration takes work and willingness. It isn’t always easy and it takes effort to gain the trust that enables us to think well together. When we begin to resonate with mutual understanding, we foster creativity in each other.
Dr. Sylvia Gaffney and I recently created a model for attending to virtual relationships to assist anyone who is...

Teams & Technology: Research from the Field

For the last three days, I have been researching virtual teams and technology for an academic paper that a colleague and I will be presenting at the International Conference on Transformative Learning, which will be held in San Francisco, California, in early November.
My mind is full of the ideas and research provided by many talented academics...

Information Systems Analysis and Design: Placing People at the Center

As explored in my previous post, in this Digital Age successful organizations are evolving into vibrant knowledge webs made possible by the Internet, organizational intranets, and virtual collaborative tools. They are now self-organizing sociotechnical systems that utilize complex cybernetic information systems to enable conversations to occur and...

The Olympics, Its Organization, and the Cybernetics Lens

Every two years, we are fascinated by the athleticism, level of competition, and the human stories in the Olympics. The latest installment of the games did not disappoint. The opening ceremony in London was spectacular and, during the last two weeks, we witnessed and celebrated the accomplishments of so many athletes.
If you have been watching the...

The Third Industrial Revolution

The notion of the third industrial revolution originated with Jeremy Rifkin, the economist and prolific author of more than 20 books, including his latest The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. Rifkin posits that our greatest economic developments arrive when a new form of energy...

Envisioning IT Professionals as Knowledge Network Architects

An organization has the potential to be a vibrant, knowledge commons. As in the age-old village where people developed a collective identity, fostered meaningful relationships, participated in engaging community dialogues, and helped each other solve problems, an organization can be a web of conversations and supportive networks. Rooted in the...

Creating a Remote Office: A Web of Workplace Conversations

I spent this past week in Washington state’s Hood Canal region, a rural area dominated by exquisite vistas of the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. I travelled there from California to get out of the hectic, stressful, 24/7 work atmosphere of my university campus office. While I had to check email, chat with colleagues and students when...

Teams & Technology

In our organizations, people are working virtually more and more often. Despite distances, team members need to work together effectively and productively, sharing and combining their insights and knowledge. Everyone needs to be clear about who knows what so they can rely on each other and work together effectively. Sharing and integrating...

Facebook on Wall Street

Facebook Inc. goes public this moring with an initial public offering (or IPO) that will potentially raise $18 billion and give the company an estimated value of $100 billion, according to news reports.
Many people throughout the world will scramble to buy shares so they can make money from the social media boom. Others will try to buy a few...

Technology’s Ultimate Purpose: An Altruistic Approach

Following my previous blog discussion concerning the sociotechnical nature of today’s society and workplace, Saybrook student Brett Joseph commented, "It is time for us to pause and consider how best to ensure that we protect and nurture our humanity.... I submit that, as we enter this timely dialogue about the implications of living in...

A Conversation at the Crossroads

In the 1990s, Manuel Castells was extensively describing the "network society" that was emerging due to the Internet and modern digital technology. During this same time period, Howard Rheingold was promoting the value of virtual communities and charting how mobile information technology was enabling people to quickly organize to create...